As with most ambassadorships, you don’t have to be overly bright or have any experience in foreign affairs. The three biggest requirements are: be wealthy, be popular and sociable, and provide extensive campaign donations to the president. It is for the most part a figurehead job that feeds someone’s ego. If we were extremely lucky, the Food Stamp President would appoint most of Hollywood to ambassadorships.

3 posted on 12/06/2012 6:24:27 PM PST by RetiredTexasVet
(The law of unintended consequences is an unforgiving and vindictive b!tch!)

I (almost) remember when J. Gilbert Wynant, a former two term Republican governor of New Hampshire, replaced Joe Kennedy as Ambassador to Britain (The Brits loved him, hated Kennedy). (FDR wanted to get him out of the country as he feared he was the only republican that could beat him...even though the republicans kicked him out of the party because he was all in favor of the raw deal (or whatever he called it). He the had an affair with Churchill’s daughter and later, upon his return to the US, shot himself in despair with a revolver to the head, similar to Gail Wynant in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. I’ve always wondered if there was a connection. Averell Harriman was in London as the expediter of the Lend-Lease Program although he wanted the ambassador job. He, in turn, had an affair with Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela whom he married much later in life...after he divorced his wife, of course. She, Pamela also had affairs with numerous others, including the married Edward R. Murrow. Pamela Harriman became the spokesman for the Democrat party, of course, in her later years...a great friend of what’s her name at the Washington Post.